Developing your team (don't make assumptions)

We make assumptions

Your leadership style is influenced by your beliefs. For example, do you think some people in your team are lazy or dislike working, and need continuous supervision or telling what to do? Or, do you believe that they are happy getting on with their jobs, and are likely to enjoy greater responsibility and freedom? These two fundamental beliefs form the backbone of the team motivation concept Theory known as X and Theory Y created by Douglas McGregor way back in the 1950s.

Theory X managers are authoritarian. They believe that their team members do not want or need responsibility, and that they have to motivate people extrinsically.

Theory Y managers believe that their team members want more responsibility and should be part of the decision-making process. They assume that everyone has something valuable to offer.

Old theories aside, the key thing here is to remember that the way we think affects the way that we act (actions and behaviours). So, your beliefs about your team members’ motivation affect the way you behave toward them. So, it is important to think carefully about how you view your people, and to explore what truly motivates them (intrinsically).

Personalise your approach

Remember, your team is made up of different individuals who have their own unique cultural norms, current circumstances, and past experiences. Consequently, each person may be driven by different motivating factors. When you make an effort to understand each and every team member, you can help them stay (self) motivated. Unlocking motivation in your team and encouraging them to exceed their expectations will help you to encourage loyalty, trust, and support and therefore a higher performing (and happier) team.

Remember push and pull. It is easier to pull someone towards something that they are intrinsically motivated to than to push your own ideas of motivation on them.

I have mentioned the importance of the recruitment process several times in previous articles. It is imperative that when you recruit people for your team you are open and honest about what the vision is and what values you operate by right from the off and ensure that this matches their own values and motivations as much as possible. If there is little match, then maybe the team is not for them. You will find that you are trying to force them to be motivated further down the line.

If you have recruited well and your team members are established, then the importance of continually developing them is vital.

Individual and team development

A word of warning here, be careful with the training and development providers that you select. Take the time to choose the right people to deliver the right development at the right time and for the right reasons. If you use 'jazz hands' training, you will get 'jazz hands' results.

Have you ever been on a training course or team building weekend and after a short space of time glazed over, become disengaged and realised that it has absolutely no relevance or cross over to your real life? It is always sad to hear about this happening to teams. It is sometimes after this has happened that we get approached at Successfactory? for help.

Effective training and development requires stimulation of the senses and must be relevant to the person or team’s real life. It must resonate and then achieve something real.

There is nothing worse than off the shelf tick box training!

There is a lot of research out there (go on look it up – you know you want to) that shows that stimulating all the senses has a profound effect on learning and development. If our senses are engaged to create a whole mind/body experience, we form long lasting memories and our learning is embedded into our minds at a much deeper level so that we recall and use what we’ve learnt much quicker and access it from our minds with much more ease. This will clearly have a positive long-term impact for a team.

Trainers/facilitators should use actions/activities, visual stimulus, textures, sounds, tastes, and smells to create real impact with learning journeys.

It is also so vitally important to make training as realistically close to the environment it is going to have to land in back in the real world. You can create realistic situations during training and development, it just takes a bit more time, thought and on occasion money.

Just to balance this out, you can talk about whatever you like in a training session, but it is only real adversity that BRINGS ABOUT AMAZING THINGS. No amount of training will truly tell you how individuals and the team will react on the ground when things happen that were not planned for. The members of my team in Afghanistan (and other places) never ceased to amaze me with their ingenuity and bravery when the proverbial hit the fan. When the pressure was on, they stepped up and delivered. Problems were overcome, challenges tackled straight on – no politics, no egos – just straight forward teamwork towards a shared goal. In times of stress some of your people will amaze you – let them.

Five things to consider with team development

1.?????? By stimulating different senses, you can influence the mood in the team and create a particular environment. To start with this should be a relaxed and calm state that reduces any potential anxiety about the up and coming training and encourages creativity. When people are aware that the environment is safe you can then start to create some energy. When creating energy in the team – usually through some kind of energiser activity, it is important to gauge the team temperature first and as with all activities during training, energisers should be relevant and in line with the core themes of the day and the overall course/programme and not just random ‘fun’ activities (that’s not to say that they can’t be fun of course).

2.?????? Do not expect everybody to be fully concentrating all the time during sessions – generally speaking, humans do not have a great attention span. To help with this use sensory stimulation to increase team members’ concentration and ensure that they are present and fully tuned in to the learning that is taking place. Improve memory and recall by using more areas of the brain simultaneously.

3.?????? Anchor the learning. Activities and tools should have relevance to the team’s real world, and they should be transferable to the working environment you are training them for. A tool that works in a comfortable room during training will not necessarily work back in the real world. Perhaps get the team to adapt activities and discussions – make them real. This creates immensely powerful learning points and gives them more control and ownership of the learning. You do not necessarily need to use role play (not many people like this) to recreate or simulate real situations so that the team can connect the learning to real experiences, just make it relevant.

4.?????? Tell me and I will forget, show me and I will remember, let me do it and I will understand. So true! Aid understanding by using sensory activities to illustrate or explore a theory or topic. Do not just talk about it – immerse people in it. Discuss a point and then show how this works in real life. Pushing people slightly out of their comfort zones helps here – activities like high ropes, problem solving, and team tasks are all good for cementing key theory points but only when used as part of the learning and not just a stand- alone bit of fun.

5.?????? Follow up all training and development post event. Keep engaging with the team and challenge them if they are not applying the learning to their world. If it is not working, then change it.

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Stimulating the senses in training shouldn’t just be a gimmick just to make training more interesting or fun but it should be an integral part of the learning that reinforces key points and have crossover to the real world of the learners.

At Successfactory? we pride ourselves in doing this really well.

All the best.

Dave

www.thesuccessfactory.co.uk

www.teamfoundations.co.uk